


Whiskey Helps

by cardinalrachelieu



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: (and makes That Face afterward), (and then i cry), (it was spurred to life by that alley scene), (read at ur own risk chickadees), (where cassian does The Thing We Shall Not Speak Of), Angst, Gen, just so much angst, this got real dark real fast
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-19
Updated: 2016-12-19
Packaged: 2018-09-09 17:22:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8902159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cardinalrachelieu/pseuds/cardinalrachelieu
Summary: “It’s for the greater good,” they tell him.“You’ve saved more lives than you know,” they tell him.“The Empire would not have shown mercy were your positions reversed,” they tell him.It’s not enough—not enough to keep the ghosts at bay, not enough to help him sleep at night, not enough to cleanse his soul of the atrocities he’s committed in the name of freedom.





	

At some point he stops being surprised by the things he’s capable of doing. Stops shaking with revulsion and regret and _terror_ when he takes a man’s life.

It’s necessary, he knows. The Empire will do worse— _has_ done worse—he knows, but that doesn’t stop him from reciting their names every night. From reminding himself that they were people; they had families; they were thrust into this war same as him, only they were on the other side of it—maybe not even by choice.

Enemy, he’d been told to call them—the people affiliated with the Empire. It was easier if he thought of them that way—as a faceless, evil entity rather than a scared, trapped individual. Because that’s who he most frequently had to kill—scared, trapped individuals. The higher-ups were too well-protected, so the Rebellion hit who they could, and that was mainly low-level techs, messengers carrying valuable intel, pilots carting shipments they’d never been allowed to see, scientists and engineers forced to turn over their work lest their families pay the price of their refusal.

No, enemy wasn’t the right word. But it was easier.

If things had happened differently when he was young, when his mother and father were slaughtered in front of him by troopers… If that Rebellion fighter hadn’t pulled him off his mother’s blood-soaked body and forced him aboard the cargo ship back to the base… He wonders what his life would look like now, if he would even have a life still.

It could be argued that he died that day along with his parents, that the man he’s become is nothing more than a wraith—an assassin clothed in armor scaled of morality and justice and every other justification he’d learned to spout when confronted with the fact that he was _taking lives_.

 _“It’s for the greater good,”_ they tell him.

 _“You’ve saved more lives than you know,”_ they tell him.

 _“The Empire would not have shown mercy were your positions reversed,”_ they tell him.

It’s not enough—not enough to keep the ghosts at bay, not enough to help him sleep at night, not enough to cleanse his soul of the atrocities he’s committed in the name of freedom.

He’s done other things, he tells himself. Not every mission the Rebellion sends him on ends in death. In fact, many don’t. Many missions are just information retrieval, but not all. And even though it’s not most, too many missions begin with a name and end with a final breath.

Whiskey helps, on the nights when he sees their eyes, their faces. He’d stopped giving them time to beg, if he had to be up close to get the job done, so he no longer hears their pleas echoing in his ears—a haunting melody that will follow him to the grave, that _should_ follow him to the grave. Still, though…

Whiskey helps.

It’s never the night after one of _those_ missions that he’s restless. No, those days he’s so utterly spent that exhaustion takes over and he sleeps undisturbed. The next night, though… and the night after that… and the night after that…

Whiskey helps.

Occasionally he wonders what his mother would think of him if she could see who he’s become, what his father would say to him were he alive to witness his descent into the murky waters of morality…

Whiskey helps.

There was a point, when he first joined the rebellion, when he thought they could do no wrong compared to an enemy so great, so evil. But he’s seen true evil, and sometimes that comes from looking in the mirror. He knows that what he does is vital, that the choices he makes are necessary in this fight, that the Rebellion needs him to continue sacrificing pieces of his soul so that those after him might come out of this untarnished.

He’s lost, he realizes. Even if he lives to see the end of the war, the fall of the Empire, he understands that he—the idealistic young man so drenched in blood that he’s not even sure what color his skin is underneath it all—won’t make it.

And he’s okay with that, he realizes.

It’s too late for him. It has been for a long time.

But it’s not too late for the future. It’s not too late for hope. 

**Author's Note:**

> help i've fallen in love with cassian andor and can't get up
> 
> join me on [tumblr](http://yalenayardeen.tumblr.com) for more tears


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